Mikyla Denney (MHR '21) is a second year Master of Human Rights student with a concentration in immigration/migration. Over the summer, Mikyla worked with Refugees International, assisting the organization's President Eric Schwartz on a range of projects and research initiatives. Read our interview with Mikyla below to hear about her experience.

Vanesa Mercado Diaz is a second year Master of Human Rights student with a concentration in women’s rights, migration and Latin America. This past summer, Vanesa worked within the Women’s Rights division at The Advocates for Human Rights, a nonprofit organization that works to change systems and conditions that cause human rights abuses around the world. We recently caught-up with Vanesa about her summer experience in the short interview below.

What do you do when a loved one mysteriously disappears and your government won’t investigate? What do you do when this happens over 61,000 times? This happened in Mexico, and Barbara Frey of IGS has developed a collaborative research program to raise visibility of this issue.

We would like to take a moment to acknowledge our wonderful graduates and their important achievements. Read about our individual students here.

The students in Barbara Frey’s human rights internship class in spring 2020 are turning their attention to the human rights impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on vulnerable groups in the world today. Here are some updates from the second installment of our Student Corner blog.

Audel Shokohzadeh is a Master of Public Policy Alumnus ('17) who graduated with a concentration in Economic Development. Audel also has a deep interest in human rights, and took a variety of human rights courses throughout his masters degree. Currently, Audel works as a Community Engagement Director at the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. We caught up with Audel to hear about his role, and how his human rights focus at the Humphrey School helped prepare him for this work.

A diverse group of University of Minnesota faculty and students spent a week at the United Nations, attending the Human Rights Council and leading meetings to advance their work on a variety of human rights projects.

A delegation of University of Minnesota faculty, researchers, students and alumni will be participating in a variety of research and outreach events at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva during the week of March 2-6, 2020. The week culminates with a public discussion by the Human Rights Lab on research ethics in faculty-student-practitioner partnerships. The visit coincides with two important sessions of the Human Rights Council and the Human Rights Committee.

Hannah Shireman is a second year Master of Human Rights student. This past summer, she worked as a Research, Education, and Advocacy Intern at The Advocates for Human Rights, working on to combat local labor trafficking. Hannah wrote about her experience here.